Page 415 - WhyAsInY

no sMoKe, But fire
affect acquaintances and friends, but, for the most part, the concept didn’t really register, not on a conscious level anyway. Oh, I suppose that it must have been an issue for me when Phyllis and I separated for two weeks in 1977, but it was quickly forgotten when we got back together again and resumed our normal lives.
What follows is a series of occurrences that look different to me in retrospect, occurrences some of which were absolutely consistent with a solid marriage, some of which might have been evidence of a fruitless struggle to keep things together, and some of which were definitely evi- dence of a desire to have things end.
Intimations of Marital Mortality
My experience with divorce was fairly limited prior to 1982. Oh, there were conversations with two people in my law firm who announced to me that they would be splitting from their wives, and there was the fact of my cousin Peter Lushing’s divorce from his wife, Susan. None of this meant anything to me. Even though we had separated in 1977, since Rachel’s birth, divorce was a totally alien concept. Divorce was some- thing that happened to other, very different, people.
And then there were Joel and Liz, and, more powerfully, Michael and Susan.
In March 1979, Joel and Liz Sternman came over for our reason- ably regular Friday night bridge game. After the usual banter, we took out the cards, Phyllis probably brought some refreshments from the kitchen, and we sat down at the bridge table, ready for the first deal. At that point, and I don’t recall whether it was Joel or Liz, or both of them virtually in unison, who said that they had an announcement to make: they were getting divorced! No elaboration, no nothing. Just the fact. Then: “Whose deal?”
(At first, we were hoping that their announcement might have been payback for a practical joke that we had played on them on an earlier bridge night. Anticipating the arrival of our favorite adversaries for one
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